I've been working 10 hour days since it came out, and while I've upgraded three machines (damn that was easy), I'm still figuring out how to use it. Cheap and easy as it is, I figure I'd better get myself acquainted as I'm sure I'll be teaching others how to make use of it soon...

Geez, if thats what I am going to be confronted with everytime I boot up and log in I may never go to 8. I like a clean desktop and everything has its place within the start menu :/

I feel like people are bashing windows 8 with never actually using it.After using it on all my PCs since friday I am actually more than happy. Metro UI is nice occasionally but with hitting the windows key on your keyboard you can easily switch to desktop.

Also the computers boot obscenly fast. i get to log on screen in a few seconds. The only issue I had was upgrading isn't very smooth. And installing on a laptop with a hybrid ssd is a little bit of a pain.

The thread was about some (apparent) Steam integration with the Windows 8 start screen, which if you're going to use Windows 8 and Steam should come in pretty handy. The options have been clear for a long time now - switch OSes or stick with 7 if you don't like it, but seriously it's time to move on with life. 18 months later we're still polluting threads with all this pouting?

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

derFunkenstein wrote:The thread was about some (apparent) Steam integration with the Windows 8 start screen, which if you're going to use Windows 8 and Steam should come in pretty handy. The options have been clear for a long time now - switch OSes or stick with 7 if you don't like it, but seriously it's time to move on with life. 18 months later we're still polluting threads with all this pouting?

Well the thread actually just shows games linked on the metro UI but that is easy to do. The only thing I can't get is it to break into different titles over those icons.

He's annoyed that UI designers seem to be completely ignoring the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule. I think at least some of that annoyance is justified.

Sure in a offhand way it was a moan and groan. But I'm sitting here with 10 Windows 8 licenses staring me in the face with my MSDN and really Nothing I have seen nor read has made Windows 8 compelling enough for me to install let alone try out. Well ok one is boot time, i'll give you that.

I desperately want to like W8 because I love 7 but for the love of god someone please sell me on this.

He's annoyed that UI designers seem to be completely ignoring the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule. I think at least some of that annoyance is justified.

Sure in a offhand way it was a moan and groan. But I'm sitting here with 10 Windows 8 licenses staring me in the face with my MSDN and really Nothing I have seen nor read has made Windows 8 compelling enough for me to install let alone try out. Well ok one is boot time, i'll give you that.

I desperately want to like W8 because I love 7 but for the love of god someone please sell me on this.

I don't hate it but I just don't see any compelling reason to install it. The interface - while kind of neat with a touch device - just doesn't make any sense with a keyboard and mouse. It's clunky and inconsistent, and it looks like crap to me. I guess some people like it, and more power to them, but for me it's just not very useful as a desktop or laptop interface. It seems like a real step backwards in terms of efficiency and functionality.

I'm glad to know that Steam will probably work. At least... we know that the icons will show up on the start screen

But even setting aside the interface, I've heard way too many people talking about bad or missing drivers, incompatibilities, and bugs to even consider installing it on any machine that I care about.

flip-mode wrote:I'm saying, just because it isn't broken doesn't mean it can't be bettered.

Indeed. The Start screen makes my "landing point" useful now. Previously a clean desktop still required me to press the Windows key or click. Now it's just right there.

And it also solves the problem of the Start menu not showing enough at a time. Used to be that you click the start button and you get somewhere between 10-30% of your screen filled with a list of apps. Now the targets are bigger AND you can see more of them at a time. AND it shows real-time information like weather and news headlines. It's kind of stupefying how much better the Start screen is over the old Start menu. It's not that MS broke-by-"fixing" what wasn't broken, it's that they really and truly made it better.

I did a clean install on my PC Friday night, and an upgrade on my wife's a couple days later because I showed her what was new on the Start screen and she wanted in on it. This is the same person who stuck by XP right up until Windows 7 SP1 because it was "different". It wasn't until she got forced upon her a new Windows 7 PC at work that she'd even go off the reservation. But now she's really into the new and different because she saw how it benefits her.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

I used the preview version up to end aug then ended reverted back to Win 7 due to the errors I was having with some games in steam. I have purchased windows 8 while it was cheap though and hope to go back to it later as I like it a lot.

d53642 wrote:I used the preview version up to end aug then ended reverted back to Win 7 due to the errors I was having with some games in steam. I have purchased windows 8 while it was cheap though and hope to go back to it later as I like it a lot.

The previews had more game issues I think.

The only one I've come across since release is Bulletstorm (though I haven't tried Crysis 2.) I know it didn't sell well, but being Epic I'm still hoping it gets fixed.

Steam big-screen mode has made this kind of unnecessary now. I took the effort to hook my PC up to my TV via HDMI and grabbed my wired Xbox 360 controller, which reaches the couch without an extension cord. I wish I'd done this sooner. I wouldn't dream of playing online PC shooters with the gamepad (or at all, for that matter), but my Max Payne 3 experience has been very satisfactory, as well as Sonic Generations and Alan Wake. Got my wireless keyboard and mouse for when I want to type or navigate around the OS. Couch game has never had it so good. Oh, and since my TV is only a 720p display (native 1366x768, which is the resolution I get when I plug my PC in) I never have a single stutter or dip on max settings. Depending on the game (Alan Wake, for instance) I'd see the frame rate drop at 1920x1080, but with half the pixels it's not happening on my TV.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.